Pages

Saturday, January 14, 2017

4. Socialism As We See It

This series taken from one of our pamphlets,From Capitalism to Socialism. . . how we live and how we could live.,
is intended to be an introduction to the socialist view of how modern
society operates and why we think socialism is necessary as a means of
organising the world more effectively.

___________________________________________________________________

4. Socialism As We See It

The comic cartoon idea of the cave man with his club displaying
aggression towards everyone is a typical fiction of modem capitalism. It
has no foundation in fact. Such an individual would not have lasted a
week in the world of prehistory. Human beings have survived and
prospered on this planet because they are adaptable and because they
have co-operated with one another. Long before there were private
property societies with their class divisions and exploitation, small
hunter-gatherer communities relied for their existence upon all members
of the clan playing their part. This co-operation lasted for many tens
of thousands of years, and the remnants of it can still be seen in
surviving primitive communities such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari
Desert, the pygmies of the Congo rain forests, Australian aborigines,
and South American Indians. The patterns of behaviour and thought
associated with such social living are therefore deeply embedded in our
languages and culture.

In comparison with this enormous length
of time, the last six or seven thousand years of private property are
only a small fraction of human existence. Based upon conflict and the
exploitation of the majority by ruling elites, they have worked in
opposition to long-standing human values and behaviour, causing a growth
and spread of mental distress and deep antagonisms within society.
Nevertheless, even class-divided societies such as our present system of
capitalism rely upon the human tendency to co-operate. Although all
sorts of persuasion, pressure, and even coercion are used to direct the
activities of the working class into profit-making forms of work and
unprotesting forms of leisure, coercion alone is quite inadequate. A
working class which unanimously decided not to co-operate would bring
the running of society to a halt. No force would be effective. It is
just because of the certainty of daily co-operation by human beings,
however badly they may be treated, that exploitative, repressive social
regimes like our own have managed – and are managing – to survive.

In modern society workers operate the production and distribution of
wealth and the administration of the capitalist system largely against
their own interests. The ideology of capitalism insists that
individualism and ruthless competition are the only worthwhile guides to
behaviour, and money the only worthwhile prize. Indeed, its ideology is
as cheap and shoddy as so many of its products. Many workers believe in
it, but it is so alien and artificial, especially in personal
relationships, that many suffer great stress and insecurity.

A Truly Human Society

The next stage of society, socialism, will come as a welcome relief. It
will bring comparative harmony to human relationships. Far from needing
a special sort of behaviour from people, socialism will run on the
patterns of action, thought and feeling that have been the norms
throughout most of human existence. Human beings will not become any
more "good" or "kind" or "helpful" or "gentle"; but the pressures which
now prevent them being all of these things at different times will have
gone – shortage of money, fear of unemployment, fear of lawbreakers,
fear of the law itself, fear of war, fear of the boss, even fear of the
trade union, and so on. All of these pressures arise directly out of the
capitalist organisation of society. When we finish with capitalism, we
shall have removed these influences upon the thoughts and actions of
every member of the working class.

The pressures which remain –
those of social living, of coping with the environment, of wrestling
with all the problems of production and distribution, these pressures
will still be considerable. The difference is that these are practical
problems, not economic ones forced upon us by a useless ruling class and
their repressive state machine, and an uncontrollable society that pits
people against one another as a matter of course. Real pressures and
problems can be seen for what they are. They do not provoke neurotic
responses and frustrated violence. Practical problems are what calls
human co-operation into action. The land will be ours, the factories and
offices and roads and railways and offices and ships and aircraft will
be everybody's, and so we shall have a personal interest in keeping them
working, keeping them up to standard and improving them. The whole of
society will benefit from every constructive act or useful piece of work
we do – not just some company's profit and loss account, some
multi-millionaire's annual dividend.

Technology in Capitalism and Socialism

Socialist society will function quite differently from capitalist
society, although initially at least it will have to use mainly the same
equipment. The difference that will be most noticeable will be the
simplicity once the cumbersome paraphernalia of capitalism has been
removed. Many people today, especially the so-called expert economists
and political theorists, are completely engrossed in the ramifications
of present capitalist society. They are so conditioned by the impossible
job of trying to make capitalism work effectively that they find it
difficult to imagine how a real alternative to it could function.

Also, complication and mystification form a smokescreen behind which
the real workings of capitalism can remain obscure or hidden. And so the
ordinary worker feels that he or she cannot possibly understand, let
alone influence, the running of society. Another difficulty is that
modern science and technology have developed with capitalism. This makes
it seem at times that there are good scientific and technical reasons
for the complexity of life and work in the modern capitalist state.
Capitalist propaganda takes advantage of this and often tries to turn
the frustration and anger that workers feel on to scientific and
technical workers, as though they were the ones who decided to make the
obscene weapons of modern war, thalidomide, battery farms or polluted
rivers. Of course, it is capitalist business and the capitalist state
that decide what workers shall produce or what experiments and research
they will fund.

The demands of profitability, competition and
international rivalry determines the lines along which scientific and
technological development shall generally take place. Computers are a
good example of this. Their main uses at present are in handling and
storing the vast quantities of financial transactions and data that are
essential to the money system (wages and deductions, income tax returns,
bank statements, mail order accounts, files of bad debtors, etc), and
in recording the increasing amount of information on individuals that
has become necessary for the state to keep control of. They are also,
however, used to perform complex scientific calculations such as the
prodigious mathematics of space flights and the ballistics of
intercontinental missiles. Therefore they could be used to help organise
large production processes, to forecast trends and developments of many
kinds, to designing engineering components and systems, to search out
and assemble information, and to carry out many other tasks which are
almost impossible for human beings because of the immense length of time
they would take. Such socially useful applications of computers have
been much slower in development and employment because of their marginal
profitability. When people complain, as they often do, that computers
are "taking over", what they are complaining about is the fact that
instead of simplifying life and work as they should do, computers in
capitalism have been used to complicate it.
In socialism, linked by
communication satellites across the world, they could monitor people's
wants, assist in the organisation of production to keep pace with them,
and help dispatch the goods to go where they were needed.

How Socialism Will Solve Problems

When we are young, we often see problems that need solving, and we
think, "why don’t they do so and so?" As we get older, we gradually
learn the reasons: because it would not be profitable; because no-one
will invest the capital; because there is too much competition from
other sources; because some firm has a virtual monopoly in that field
and will buy up or force out new ideas; because there are patents
protecting the device; because it would cause political problems; and so
on. At our place of work, in the area where we live, even with
world-wide problems, we can often see better ways of doing things, and
yet they rarely get done. If we take the trouble to find out how
capitalism works we realise that many of these commonsense things, like
using "surplus" food to prevent people starving in the world, simply
cannot be done within the current system on any regular basis.

In a socialist world, the claims of any one proposal will have to be
balanced against the claims of many others. And it will not be "they"
who make the decisions and carry out the work; it will be "we". There
will be a great deal of discussion, small-scale and large-scale, and the
process of decision-making will be democratic. Television, which is at
present taken up for the greater part of its time with what currently
passes for "entertainment", could become a forum for much of the
large-scale discussion and decision-making, providing us with vivid,
well researched information and covering many points of view. Telephone
conferencing, the internet and other growing means of telecommunication
could unite groups scattered round the world so that they could discuss
projects, share information and reach decisions on a democratic basis.
Such means could also be used for ascertaining the level of demand for
many goods and services.

The primary task of socialism will be
to produce enough of all the things that people need and to get them to
the right places at the right times. This will require a large part of
the administrative organisation already built up within capitalism; but
it will require more. Firstly, in the world as a whole, not enough of
the most useful things is ever produced. It is a system of artificial
scarcity. In socialism we shall need to produce much more, so that
everyone can have enough. And it will be quite possible to do this.

One example of how this can happen compared to what happens now relates
to the way in which periodically, world-wide capitalism enters into
severe slumps because too much has been produced for available markets.
Goods pile up, unable to be sold, and enterprises shut down. When this
occurs the production of goods and services falls hugely below its
potential. The number of unemployed workers runs into tens of millions.
Factories, machines and offices, ships and lorries, buildings and land
stand idle because they cannot be used profitably. The productive
potential of all these is enormous; but it is by no means the whole
story. Many of the factories and farms, mines and ships that remain
working are typically on short time and a large proportion of the
production that is still being carried on will be in weapons, equipment
or services for making war, rather than production of things that are
genuinely useful.

More noticeable than any of this in
capitalism, however – whether in slump or boom – is the number of
workers and the plant and equipment devoted to running and protecting
the system of capitalism itself. Apart from all the forces of law and
order, much of whose work we rarely see, the financial system itself is a
coercive apparatus that we tend to take for granted. It is totally
useless to a free society, but in capitalism a large number of the
working population spend their lives in its service. Although the
following lists are far from complete they give some idea of the social
costs of running the capitalist system:

In the moneyless world of socialism, where private property will not
exist, the people currently involved in such occupations will be able to
choose more rewarding and useful kinds of work. But this is only the
beginning: restrictive practices and regulations that exist in
capitalism, whether initiated by employers, governments, or
trading-blocs such as the European Union, or even the defensive
practices of trade unions, deliberately curtail a great deal of
production. And the possibilities of automation, which the capitalist
system can only introduce in bits and pieces, are, as yet, largely
unrealised. Tedious, dirty or dangerous jobs that at present constitute a
miserable working life for so many millions of workers across the world
could be automated in socialist society. We have developed a technology
so sophisticated that it can send machines to the surface of the planet
Mars, scrape up soil samples and analyse them. This suggests that there
is no existing social problem that we cannot solve. The science and
technology are already established to create a world of abundance for
everyone; but only socialism can turn it into a reality.

To
support the whole process of production and distribution, socialist
society will need a highly sophisticated system of information: about
what people want, in what quantities; and about what is being produced
all over the world. Capitalism has already developed technology and
techniques which could make such a world-wide system extremely fast,
comprehensive and accurate. But because of competition and the secrecy
that goes with it; because of the market and its fluctuations; above all
because the main aim of capitalism is to produce profit, not goods,
capitalism cannot develop a really sensible and workable information
system. For a socialist world it will be vital.

Democratic Choice

A socialist world will, of course, be what we all make it. Everyone's
ideas and efforts will contribute. Everyone will, if they choose to,
have an equal voice in the democratic decisions that are taken. Perhaps
this is one thing about socialist society that most of us today would
find strikingly different – the amount of discussion that will take
place about what things are to be made and built. There will be no
market forces offering a quick profit in plastic handbags or causing a
shutdown in shipping. There will be no governments imposing taxes,
preparing for germ warfare, tapping telephones or closing hospitals.
Road-building, shipping, agriculture, manufacturing, distribution,
services, entertainment – these things will be everybody's concern. And
these things – not crimes or wars – will be news. The whole pattern of
production and distribution will become a conscious social process.

It is this that will be in such marked contrast with capitalism, where
the process as a whole is outside the control, not only of individuals,
but of governments and even international agencies. This is because
everything is dominated by the movements of money capital, the operation
of the price system and the unpredictable fluctuations of the market.
This capitalist system can be tampered with but it can never be brought
under social control. The step forward into socialism will dispense with
the anarchy of this market mechanism completely.

From then onwards
society will have to decide whether or not to irrigate a desert, or how
great the demand is for galvanised roofing nails. The only way in which
such decisions can be made is by increased information and discussion-by
making open and conscious all those fluctuations and individual
decisions which in capitalism are hidden and unconscious. But, of
course, socialism will be much less complicated than capitalism; and the
information needed will be simpler, consisting of straightforward
material factors without the complexities of market economics. There
will be no capitalist class, competing amongst themselves with secrecy
and skulduggery, and exploiting the majority of the population, the
working class, for the maximum possible growth in capital. Needs will be
the spur to production in the socialist world, not profit.

Socialism is only possible because capitalism has preceded it.
Capitalism has developed techniques of production potentially capable of
producing an abundance; it has developed a world-wide working class
which runs every aspect of modern society; and it is rapidly developing
information technology making world-wide communication simpler and more
direct. But at the same time capitalism frustrates all of the
developments because of the workings of capital itself and the interests
of the capitalist class. The same sort of pattern can be seen in
details. Supermarkets, for example, are a highly efficient method of
putting a wide range of consumer goods within the reach of a large
number of people. The trouble with supermarkets is the bottleneck at the
cash desk. Because money will be useless in a socialist world, so will
the cash desks. "Supermarkets" will then be able to function at full
efficiency. Their shelves will be kept full by the removal of all the
financial and trading restrictions that now cause butter mountains, wine
lakes, and often ruin for farmers.

Work in Socialism

Work will also undergo a complete change as socialist society develops.
We have noted the fact that capitalist society is extremely wasteful of
human labour in many ways and only introduces labour-saving automation
when profitable. At present levels of production, therefore, the actual
amount of work needed of one person could be much less than it is now.
Even with the increased output needed for a developed socialist world it
will probably not be necessary for most people to work as long or as
hard as they do today. But this is not the most important of the changes
that will take place. The really noticeable change, right from the
beginning, will be in the status and the conditions of work.

In
capitalism, because the places where we work are owned by another class,
we have no say in what we produce, how it is produced, or where it goes
to; and we have very little control over where we work, the conditions
we work in, the tools and machines we work with, or the raw materials we
handle. Moreover, the existing system of education and training, with
its ladder of examinations and certificates, means that we get
channelled into certain types of jobs, and it becomes harder and harder
to change as we grow older, so become "a teacher", "a machine operator",
"a nurse" for the rest of our working lives. With the establishment of
socialism, we shall cease to be a working class. The labour market will
have gone.

Living in a society of equality we shall have a
direct influence upon whatever work we do. The workplace, the tools, the
organisation, the quality and quantity of the goods or services we
provide will be our concern and under our democratic control; and we
shall no doubt be interested in who uses our products and for what.
Those working in factories, warehouses, transport, and so on will be
able to review the machines, the tools, the buildings, and decide that
certain improvements are necessary. Although they will co-ordinate their
proposals with other related groups in the network of production and
distribution, the final control over their conditions of work will be
theirs. Society will be unable to compel anyone to work in conditions
they find unacceptable. This means that only those jobs which people are
prepared to do will be done. If no-one will go down coal mines, even
for the sake of the admiration and gratitude of the community, we shall
either have to manage without coal or develop other forms of technology.

This freedom from compulsion will eventually give rise to a completely
different pattern of work for the individual, and a completely different
attitude towards it. Only a few dedicated enthusiasts will want to do
the same job every day throughout their lives. Most of us will want
variety. We shall want to develop whatever skills we have and use all of
them at one time or another. So some people may settle down to doing
two or three different jobs on different days of the week or times of
the year. Others may devote themselves exclusively to one interest for
four or five years until they have satisfied themselves, and then move
on to something else. It may even become necessary to "book" a job, as
we now book a holiday or an hour on a tennis court. And we may well see
traditions develop where certain types of work are done by young people
because they require a lot of energy and physical fitness. Patterns will
probably vary in different parts of the world.

The essentials
of a socialist world are that society's means of producing and
distributing what it needs will be owned by everyone and democratically
controlled by everyone. It is from this change that all the other
changes will follow. What society and the individuals within it will do
with the freedom and co-operation that it makes possible we can guess
at, but we cannot lay down in advance.

Nevertheless there is no reason
why we should not discuss the possibilities now, if only to keep clear
in our minds the important fact that socialism will not be capitalism
with minor reforms, but a totally different social system. We may begin
with the equipment taken over from capitalism, but we shall adapt it for
quite a new way of life that will develop further and further away from
the pattern imposed upon us by capitalism.